Canadians find Royal Navy ship missing for nearly 170 years in the North-west Passage

Canadians find Royal Navy ship missing for nearly 170 years in the North-west Passage
10 September 2014

One of the greatest mysteries in Royal Navy history – the fate of an expedition to the fabled North-west Passage – is one step closer to being solved after Canadians found one of the wrecks.

HMS Terror and Erebus vanished in the mid-1840s as they tried to find a route between the Atlantic and Pacific through the waters of northern Canada.

Pictures: Parks Canada

THESE scattered timbers and cannon, covered by nearly 170 years of marine growth, are the answer to one of the greatest mysteries in Royal Navy history.

This is one of the wrecks of Admiral Franklin’s ill-fated expedition to find a way through the legendary North-west Passage – the route between the Atlantic and Pacific sought by mariners for centuries.

No-one has seen any of Franklin’s 130 men or his ships HMS Erebus and Terror since the summer of 1845 – despite extensive searches neither ship was found.

A sonar scan of the wreck

The Canadian Government has made a concerted effort to locate the ships – six expeditions in the past decade – and this week announced it had found one of the vessels in the Victoria Strait, a good 200 miles inside the Arctic Circle and nearly 2,000 miles from Toronto.

Canadian Premier Stephen Harper said the initial survey of the wreck site, off King William Island, had confirmed that the vessel found – largely intact – was one of Franklin’s, although it’s not been determined yet whether it’s Erebus or Terror.

Both were almost identical in size – just over 100ft long – and became trapped in the ice for good in September 1846.

After two winters on remote King William Island, the remaining crew – Franklin not among them, for he died in the summer of 1847 – set out to reach civilisation. None of them made it.

Some equipment and notes left by the sailors crew were subsequently recovered, allowing historians

The exact location of the wreck is not being disclosed, but it lies just 35ft down, and has been designated a National Historic Site of Canada.

A contemporary sketch shows HMS Terror trapped in the Arctic ice. Picture: Canadian National Archives

“This is truly a historic moment for Canada. Franklin’s ships are an important part of Canadian history,” Mr Harper said.

“Finding the first vessel will no doubt provide the momentum – or wind in our sails – necessary to locate its sister ship and find out even more about what happened to the Franklin Expedition’s crew.”